Sunlight
by antepathy
Summary: IDW Wing/Drift various fics responding to a 100s prompt table.  Slash and may contain sticky.  Just piling them all in one angsty, schmoopy mass.
1. Dove

Ohaithar. Yeah this is just going to be another of those 'collected' stories, that has NO plot and no real continuity. Just random ficlets for a 100s prompt table for IDW Wing/Drift. I'll warn for chapters in which there's sticky. Schmoop and angst, probably should be expected.

Drift had insisted Wing show him the city. Top to bottom. Determined to root out the injustice, the suffering he knew was buried there, underneath. Iacon had seemed like a glittering perfect jewel, itself. But Drift had known better, living in the gutters where they never saw solar light, where air was cycled and recycled to the point of stale tang.

Thus far, nothing but clean and pretty. Lies, all lies. It was just a matter of time before he'd penetrate them, though.

Wing led him into a park, crystal leaves ringing and tinkling from silver branches as they brushed by. Wing directed him to a small bench, his face lighting in a smile. "I'll be right back. Stay here." His smile flashed broader, as though he could not imagine a more beautiful place to be, before turning and heading down a copper-paved path.

Drift frowned, looking around. He'd seen the optics of others on him today for the first time—as though they had any right to look. But they knew a stranger, and they recognized his legs—the dark flat planes of armor, as alien to them as their ornate arcs and swoops were to him.

Here, though, was secluded. Wing no doubt wanting to keep him away from the truth.

Drift scanned, stepping down the path. Nothing but trees, musical, tinkling trees, low crystal formations, glowing and humming, generating a soft hum of music that drowned the sounds of the city all around them. If he didn't know any better, if he didn't look up, he could almost imagine he was planetside.

"There you are!" Wing's warm tenor, happy. Drift turned to see Wing with a parcel in his hands. Wing raised it. "I brought us something to eat." He gestured meaningfully toward the low, white bench.

Drift wanted to refuse, but his autorepair had devoured his own energy stores, and the moment he heard the notion of refueling, his cortex could not let it go. He slumped onto the bench.

Wing straddled the end, laying his parcel between them, unwrapping it with skilled fingers. His Great Sword hung nearly to the ground.

"What's that?" It didn't look like any ration pack he'd ever seen.

"Energon?" Wing looked amused, as though Drift had shown some charming naivete.

"Why's it look like that?" The energon was marbled different colors, and somehow a gel or solid, carved into intricate shapes.

Wing shrugged. "Because the mech I bought it from thinks his wares should look as good as they taste? You'll have to ask him."

"Waste of effort."

"It's his effort to waste, then," Wing said, mildly. He handed one of the small shapes to him. "Try it, at least?"

Drift took it, studying it. Ridiculous. Energon was a sludgy liquid, everyone knew that. It wasn't meant to be solid. Or have glittery silver dust on it. He felt Wing's optics on him, studying him. He shot back a glare, and took a defiant bite. And. Oh.

Wing laughed. "Good, yes?" He bit into one of his own, letting his optics dim as he savored the taste.

Drift managed to swallow. "Waste," he said, defiant.

"Is it?" Wing's optics tilted, curious. "Is it a waste that something be better than it absolutely baseline has to be?"

"Yes."

Wing tilted his head, optics gleaming the way they did when he'd caught Drift. "You're better than you have to be, yes? At your warfare?"

Drift's optics glared back, hard, before he tore them away, looking at the dipping and dancing branches in front of him. "Different." His optics flicked over to Wing, before taking another bite of the cube. It seemed to melt into his systems. "Besides. Costs too much."

"He can charge what he sees fit." Wing shrugged. "I think it's worth it."

"Means some can't afford it. Some starve." Drift's optics were hard blades.

"No one starves here, Drift." Wing took another bite. "Anyone can buy his cubes."

"If they have the money." It struck Drift suddenly that…these had cost money. And that Wing had spent it on him. He faltered.

"Anyone in New Crystal City can get subsistence rations, and a place to live," Wing said, patiently. "More than that, any luxuries, yes, they cost money. But," he shrugged, "It is not that hard to acquire."

Drift felt his hands ball into fists. Not that hard. When he'd had to steal back on Cybertron. "And how do you 'acquire' it?" he sneered.

"Me?" Wing shrugged. "I have a stipend as a Knight—to compensate for the practice I must do. Beyond that, well…," he considered. "I have done service at this park, for example, or helped others move, or run errands." He riffled his wings, shyly. "I am considered a fast courier."

"And that's it? You do odd jobs."

"Helping others is not…'odd'."

Deliberately misunderstanding? "You know what I mean."

Wing smiled. "Yes, and if I did not want nicer things, I could conceivably not work at all." He reached a hand toward Drift's arm. "We made changes. We learned our lesson from Cybertron."

Drift growled. "Didn't do us much good."

"I know. I'm sorry." The hand closed gently over Drift's wrist. Drift tried to shake it off.

"Not your fault," he muttered.

"It wasn't…that kind of apology. I regret what you had to go through. But," Wing scooted nearer, his wings spreading to clear the edge of the bench, "it made you who you are."

"Great." Drift felt his mouth curl. Who he was. Like that was that great.

Wing reached down to the parcel spread open between his thighs, handing another of the energon cubes to Drift. Drift wanted to throw it away, crush it into the ground, but…Wing had worked for it. Wing had spent money and effort on something he thought Drift would enjoy. It was…weird. Uncomfortable. And though he thought it was a total waste of Wing's time, it hit him in ways, in places, no weapon had ever struck. "Please?" Wing said, gold optics warm.

"Why?" Drift asked even as his fingers closed over it, knowing he wouldn't throw it, wouldn't grind it into powder. Looking at it, studying it, because it meant something, everything he'd never had. Not just luxury.

"Because it would make me happy to see you enjoy something?"

That. He'd never had that. What would it take to feel that? What would it take to see that in someone else, that their happiness made yours?

He looked away, his blue optics scouring the careful beauty of the park. As he looked, a silver leaf detached itself from its crystalline branch, spinning idly down to the ground, landing with a soft clink. He turned back to Wing, gaze running over the spread white wings, the open, earnest face. He tilted his chin down. "Not going to eat alone."

And the smile that kindled on Wing's face meant, suddenly, everything.


	2. Repair

PG  
IDW/G1, Drift miniseries  
Drift/Wing  
no real warnings, some foreshadowing? mostly, um, fluff?  
For lj tf_rare_pairing weekly request prompt: Wing/Drift do you think I like myself?

Drift charged, head down, blind with rage, one fist aiming toward Wing's midsection. They'd been at this all afternoon, and the afternoon before that, and the one before that, until Drift would eventually exhaust himself. And he had yet to lay a hand on Wing, yet to so much as scratch the white enamel.

Wing dodged at the last microklik, stepping easily to one side, obviously waiting, goading, building up false hope, and Drift's momentum carried him forward in a blind run that Wing halted by a quick sweep at his foot as it hit the ground.

He crashed hard, on his face, one of the cheek panels of his armor cracking, his chin crunching, vid feed blanking. He gathered himself in a fury, pushing blindly to his feet, slipping in a slick of energon from his cracked armor, nearly crashing again until he was steadied by a pair of solid hands on his chassis.

"I think we're done for the day," Wing said, voice gentle. Pitying, Drift thought. Pity and contempt.

"I don't think so," Drift said, wincing as speech cracked his armor more.

"You're injured." Wing came around to his front, gold optics light with concern.

"So?" Drift challenged, wiping his mouth with one hand, trying to wipe away the humiliating stain of seeping energon. His fingers came up slick and purpled. "Been hurt worse and kept fighting."

"This…isn't that kind of fight," Wing said. He leaned in, tipping Drift's chin up to make their gazes meet.

"Only one kind of fight. One wins, one loses." And he was tired of losing.

Wing shook his head. "There is no losing here, Drift. There is only you becoming stronger."

Drift's optics narrowed. "Sick of your riddles, Wing."

Wing grinned, tipping his head. "I know. But injuring yourself is not the point here. I do not want you to be injured."

Wing's notion of fighting was…something else. Something beyond Drift's comprehension. "Can't say the same," Drift spat.

The smile faded. "I know. But hate is…a poison, Drift." Wing considered him for a long moment debating saying something more, before turning away. "Let's get that patched."

Drift growled, refusing to move to where Wing knelt by the repair kit. Wing turned, his wingspan shifting in a way that even injured Drift found disturbingly captivating, flattening the fins of his shoulder nacelle to get a clearer view. He smiled, shaking his head, and rose, carrying the supplies as he returned. "Will you at least hold this?" He held out the spool of patch tape. Drift snatched it, ill-tempered by Wing's easy tolerance. Sometimes it seemed that nothing he could do could irritate the white jet.

Then…why did he want to?

Wing took a cleansing cloth and began swabbing at the cracked plate. He leaned in, optics keen and focused on his work. Drift didn't know where to look. He studied the intricate spirework of Wing's helm, letting his optics drift slowly over the alien architecture, the swoops and scrolls and spirals, trying, in the end, simply not to feel. Not to feel pain, not to feel anything, not to notice the sympathy and kindness, nor Wing's delicate touches.

Wing pulled back, tucking the cleansing rag away, his optics moving from the cracked armor to Drift's face. Whatever he read there, he dropped his optics, shyly, before taking the nanite vial. "This will sting," he murmured.

Drift grunted, jutting his chin forward in challenge. He didn't mind pain. Just defeat. Just weakness. Just humiliation.

Wing gave a soft snort of laughter, cracking open the vial and tipping it into the crack. He tilted Drift's chin up, letting the fluid nanites trickle into the gap. Drift hissed at the sudden sear of pain. Wing's optics flickered. "I am sorry," he breathed.

"Not your fault," Drift muttered. "My stupid fault. My injury."

"Do you blame yourself for every injury earned in your combats, Drift?"

"Only the ones where I'm stupid and weak."

"So...never," Wing teased. "Because you are neither." He traced a finger down the underside of the cheek lamellar, wiping away a trickle of nanite.

Drift muttered a curse, pulling away.

"Tape, please?" Drift held out the tape, wordlessly. Wing nodded, his smile regaining strength as he tore off a strip. "I thought we'd use the clear patch, even though this will be able to come off by evening."

Drift twitched. As though he'd care if anyone saw him with patch tape. "Doesn't matter."

Wing tilted his head. "But it does. No sense marring your looks."

Drift's nasal wrinkled in a bitter snort. "My looks."

Wing tilted your head. "Your looks, yes. Do you think you're unattractive?" Something searching in his optics.

Drift rocked back on his feet. He'd...never thought of it before. He'd caught Turmoil's eye, but...that could have been a number of factors. And compared to Wing? "Doesn't matter," he said, finally, churlishly.

The gold optics dimmed with concern. "But...I think it does matter." A pause while he leaned forward, quick black fingers applying the patch tape to keep the armor panels locked together while the nanites did their work. "And," Wing murmured, his optics solidly on the patch he was making, "I find you attractive."

Drift grabbed at one of Wing's wrists, squeezing hard enough to feel lines compress under his fingers. He glared at Wing, but then...his optics softened, at a loss, as Wing's shy optics broke from his hard blue gaze to skate over Drift's face. Drift had never been looked at like this before, never been admired, like he was some exhibit, something worth looking at. He'd been studied for weaknesses, he'd been gloated over. But nothing like Wing's warm, appreciative gaze, memorizing the lines of his face, the pattern of his armor, seeming to trace the snarl of his mouth like light fingers. "I think," Wing repeated, "you're beautiful. It's not just the exterior." His smile quirked. "But it's a place to start."

Drift pushed him away, roughly, the confused mass of emotions colliding in his cortex. So he reacted the only way he knew how. "Done with patching," he snapped.

Even caught off guard, Wing merely danced back easily under Drift's rough shove, though his optics hooded, confused.

"I'm not a 'beautiful' anything," Drift snapped. "You don't know."

"I do know," Wing said, his tenor voice sad. "I wish you did."

"Your blind optimism is going to get you killed one day," Drift retorted.

"Possibly," Wing said, with an easy shrug. "But it is not worse, I think, than dying embittered and empty."

"Is that what you think I am?" Drift's fists balled, despite the days of evidence he'd had that he could not so much as lay a hand on Wing, could not go his usual route of shutting others up, or down, with force.

"Of course not!" Wing looked hurt. "How could you even think that?"

Drift glowered.

Wing reached forward, slowly, smoothing the patch tape with one finger, his smile lopsided. "I do not know you, Drift, and I do not wholly understand you, but I brought you here. Because I trust you. And because there's something in you that is good and worthy. I just...wish you could see it."

Drift caught at the hand again, but this time, he held it, and forced Wing's gaze to his for a long moment, before jerking it in, pulling Wing's chassis against his. Wing was a naïve fool, throwing his trust away on someone like Drift, who had betrayed him before. But those golden optics were irresistible, lit with that rich, warm fire, and that beautiful face, the gentle curve of the mouth plates were temptations of their own, and Drift found he could not resist. Things...he had never had before, had never dreamed of having—someone like Wing wanting him, admiring him, something beautiful laid before him, someone trusting him, desiring him.

His mouth covered Wing's fiercely, as though finding home.


	3. Silence

PG  
IDW  
Drift, Wing, OC (Spire)  
no warnings  
for tformers100 prompt 'Silence'

It was a special kind of torture, Drift decided, to be more or less attached to Wing at all times. Not just the continual exposure to Wing's toxic levels of optimism, but just the fact that someone was responsible for him. He chafed. He was responsible for himself. No one else. No one else should get involved.

He slouched against the wall as Wing swept by him again, energy blades flashing, casting white and blue sparks like shooting stars against the black metal of another Knight's blades. The room echoed with the noise of clashing blades, the whirring hum of engines and actuators, echoing through the broad, high space. Some sort of practice space, with high arched windows, carved, ornate racks for a variety of weapons dotted along the wall.

Stupid stuff, Drift thought. Archaic weapons, no range on them at all. Anyone with a gun could kill any one of these metal-swinging idiots, fell them from a safe distance.

Which meant that this was just a game, really. No matter how serious Wing's expression—and he never smiled, taking these 'practices' with a solemnity that seemed almost out of character for him—it was a game. A distraction. Silly mechs playing at war.

They wouldn't last five kliks in a real battle.

Here, though? They went at each other endlessly, it seemed, blade meeting blade, blow meeting block or evasion, like some kind of a fluid dance. Back and forth across the room, whirling, dodging, sweeping forward, driving back.

The blue Knight Wing was fighting dropped low, his metal blade flashing, scoring a thin silver line across Wing's abdomen, just as Wing's dual blades sliced down toward the blue helm.

They both stopped, Wing's blades flicking up out of the way, wrists snapping up, the blue mech straightening.

"Good one!" Wing said, snapping off one blade, stroking over the injury that was beginning to seep energon.

"You'd win, though," the other mech said, easily. "Yours was a kill move."

"Yes, but it left me open, Spire," Wing said, "And it's no small thing that you saw the advantage and took it."

Drift growled to himself by the wall. "Fraggin' ridiculous." They looked over. He shrugged. "Standing around complimenting each other. Next thing you know you'll be thanking each other."

Wing grinned, fingers still spread over his injury. "At the end, yes, we do exactly that. For the effort our opponent has put into making us a better fighter. For honoring us with their best."

Drift's optics rolled. Should have figured. Everything here was swathed in these ridiculous philosophies, stupid rituals. "Personally, I've got no problem with an enemy who's not at his best. Whole point is to win. Makes my job easier."

The look of ineffable sympathy Spire shot Wing enflamed Drift's temper. "You do not understand our ways, stranger," Spire said, coolly. He stowed his own swords. "Everything you said indicates that. We are not enemies. We are not fighting to win. We aren't…fighting."

"Then you're useless. All of this, doing nothing. Killing nothing…except time."

Spire's mouth narrowed to a thin, tight line. He turned crisply to Wing, bowing deeply. "Thank you," he said, formally, "for the benefit of your experience. But I…must go now." His optics slid to Drift, making clear that the reason was…Drift.

"And I you," Wing returned, "We can perhaps continue another time?"

Spire nodded. "Let's patch that."

Wing tilted his head, considering for a moment. "That…won't be necessary. Drift will gladly do it."

Spire's optics jumped between the two. His shoulders hitched. "It is your decision, Wing." Dripping with doubt. As though Drift wouldn't patch it right. He gave another semi-bow, and strode off.

"Sorry," Drift said, churlishly, flatly.

Wing dropped to a knee beside him. "You should never apologize for speaking your mind. Oppression begins with thoughts." His gold optics were warm, not cold and hard like Spire's.

Drift jerked his chin at the retreating figure. "He doesn't like me."

"Does that matter?" That strange half-teasing, half-earnest…thing Wing did.

Drift shrugged. "Didn't think pacifists did hate."

"There is a difference between not agreeing and hate, Drift." A rueful return shrug. "At least…here."

Drift glowered, until a falling droplet of energon seeping from between Wing's fingers pattered against the floor. "Get you patched up," he said, gruffly.

Wing's smile glowed like he had won some victory. "Yes." He rose to his feet, holding out his other hand to Drift. Drift shrugged it aside, but the gesture was so perfectly and completely Wing: maddening, frustrating, and yet…impossible to take offense to. And, oh, Drift had tried.

He followed Wing over to an alcove under one of the broad, high windows, the bright light of the artificial day casting the black mullions into an intricate tracery of shadows on the floor, skimming over their bodies like gossamer as they moved. The repair kit was in a carved bracket on the wall—like everything here, it was prettier than it had to be.

Including, he thought abruptly, Wing.

Wing, who had sprawled back onto the alcove's ledge, propped on his elbows, watching Drift as he dropped one knee on the ledge next to Wing's ribstrut. Energon smeared over Wing's abdominal plating, the cut oozing fitfully from the silver-cut lips of the wound. Drift had seen worse, way worse. He swabbed a small cleansing rag over the wound, mopping up the leaking energon. Wing craned his neck, watching, curious. As though he didn't get injured that much. As though this was an entirely new experience.

"Probably going to hurt," Drift said, holding up a small nanite vial, the silver viscous liquid seeming to swirl and move on its own.

"I am not afraid of pain," Wing said, quietly, his smile growing mysterious, as though he knew something Drift did not. His grin stayed on his face as Drift cracked the capsule, spilling the silver liquid slowly over the wound. The nanites got to work quickly, knitting together the metal panels enough to stop the energon leak. Drift tore a measure of patchtape and hesitated, suddenly aware of…touch. It was stupid. He'd just wiped the wound down, but now, suddenly, the idea of laying patch tape, smoothing it with his fingers over Wing's abdomen, the sensitive plates of his ribs.

He'd patched mechs he'd hated, in his time. No hesitation, no weird thoughts. Why was this different?

He grunted, pushing the thought aside with effort, and defiantly slapped the tape along the cut, keeping his gaze fixed and set along the line of the wound, keeping his touch hard an impassive, refusing to meet Wing's gaze. "There," he said, flatly.

"Here," Wing teased, his voice music and movement against the dark bar of Drift's.

"Small thing. Tape can come off later." Stick to the neutral, to what he'd seen before thousands of times.

"Thank you." Wing sat up, pushing off his elbows, and suddenly his helm was a handspan from Drift's, his gold optics so near that Drift could feel their warmth on his face. "It will need to be sanded and enameled later. I could…find someone else?" An offer, an acknowledgement of Drift's discomfort, and also, Drift thought, a challenge. He could feel the optics travel over his face.

"No." His voice sounded strange in his own audio, but his cortex spooled out images of Wing, lying beneath him as he stroked a sanding tool over the armor, smoothing away the spall from the overactive nanites. His hands shook. This is nothing different, he tried to tell himself. You've done this dozens of times. Hundreds. "I finish what I start," he said, and it seemed to echo strangely in the high vaulted room, as if caught and rebounding from the shadows of the window mullions, his words reaching away from him, into a high, sacred silence.


	4. Recoup

NC-17  
IDW  
Drift/Wing  
sticky, very light dubcon  
tformers100 table: peace, prompt: healing.

Drift shifted restlessly on the berth in the cold, sterile medbay. He wasn't tired, but they had insisted he 'rest'. Rest. Like he had time for this. He had to get out of this place, get back to the war. He did not need 'rest'. That was for the weak. Technicians encouraged weakness. There was no war here. Too easy to simply get lost, get soft.

"Drift?" Wing's head appeared in the doorway, a familiar face. Which was odd—he barely knew the jet and he'd already become the only anchor of familiarity here.

"What?" he snapped.

Wing's smile shriveled. "They sent me to check on you."

"Lucky you."

Wing's smile stabilized, gold optics warming. "I think so."

'Then you're an idiot,' was just on the verge of Drift's mouth. Wing was…infuriating. But Wing swept into the room, carrying a small tray. He pushed up onto his elbows, eyeing the crystal tray suspiciously. "What's that?"

Wing perched on the side of the berth, Great Sword tilting to one side, fingers toying with the tray's contents. "You've had major systems repairs. They should be checked over."

"Have maintenance subroutines," Drift said, defensive, bringing one knee up between them.

"We're not doubting that. Just that…so many of your systems had to be upgraded that, well," Wing laughed, sheepishly, "there's some concern about rejection."

Rejection. Drift was still bridling over 'upgrades'. His armor and systems were some of the best in the Decepticon forces. "Show you rejection," he muttered.

Wing laughed again, turning his face away for a moment. "I'm sure you would, Drift." He turned back. "But please, I won't be long if you'll let me…?"

There was no way he was going to be able to stop Wing. Oh he could physically stop the jet, but that would leave him trapped in an underground city, a fugitive where everyone knew everyone else and he stood out like a beacon. Right. He knew when he was trapped.

"Why you, anyway," he said. "And not a proper medic."

"Ah, that." Wing busied himself toying with the objects on the tray for a moment, before turning with a pressure gauge and, Drift decided, a handy lie. "We thought that perhaps you might appreciate a familiar face."

Right. "You mean no one wants to put up with me."

Wing just laughed, but it rang a bit false, for once. "You are…a challenge." The laugh faded. "We are out of practice with strangers," he admitted. "And," he said, nodding briskly, recovering himself, "I am in need of practice with this equipment."

Well, that boded…well. Drift watched, a bit nervous, as Wing attached pressure gauge to one of his fluid hoses, the black fingers sure and nimble enough. He'd suffered through worse medics. In fact, Wing's gentle touches were almost too gentle, his fingers skimming lightly over Drift's armor, opening armor catches, sweeping over the exposed systems with a pressure scanner. Drift shuddered, optics traveling in a hot line up Wing's fingers, his arms, to the jet's exotic, beautiful frame.

Wing's optics flew to his face. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." He snatched his hands back, nervously adding, "I did say I needed practice."

Drift exhaled. "Not…that."

Wing looked confused, his hands wringing around the scanner on his lap. "Something else? Are you in pain?"

Drift blinked his optics in frustration, the stir of desire colliding with Wing's strange shyness. He pushed up, studying Wing, deciding, weighing.

Why, he thought, am I even hesitating? I want him. I take him. It's not that hard. It's how it works.

But Wing…

…is no different. Drift leaned forward, his hand seizing one of Wing's audio fins, dragging the head closer to his, locking Wing's surprised sound in his vocalizer, covering Wing's mouth with his own, before he could have any more questions or doubts. He expected resistance, his mouth hard against Wing's, his other hand wrapping around one shoulder, pulling the white armor close.

Wing didn't fight or push back, the scanner falling from his startled hands before he melted into the harsh kiss, his mouth opening around Drift's intrusive glossa, yielding against him, leaning forward, mutely offering more.

Drift did not refuse offers. He lay back, pulling Wing on top of him, feeling the jet move over him, his chassis sliding over Drift's new armor, kicking out his legs to tangle with Drift's own. Drift blazed with desire, arching up into the white frame over him, squeezing one of Wing's thighs between his own, hands roaming blind over the wings, the Great Sword's scabbard. Wing moaned against him, his own hands pressed flat between them, fingertips like little stars of sensation on Drift's sensors.

Drift raked his hands down the scabbard. Wing arched up, tearing his mouth from the kiss, gasping, hands clutching on Drift's armor. Drift growled, possessively, curling upward to sink his dentae into the exposed throat, laughing as Wing juddered against him.

"Drift!" Wing managed, barely. "We should not…."

Drift released the cable he'd bitten down on. "We should," he countered, with his own, inexorable logic. His hands moved to Wing's hips, flattening down on the pelvic span, as he ground his own armor up against it. Behind it, his spike raged with want.

"We could get caught," Wing whispered.

Drift felt a lopsided grin spread over his face. That was not a 'no.' At all. And, "You, of all mechs, afraid of getting caught?" Right. Wandering planetside, alone? Planning on attacking a ship by himself? "We could. But I don't care." He wriggled his hips down, one hand sliding around the jet's side to the gap he made in their bodies. "And neither should you."

Wing squeaked as Drift's hand closed over his interface hatch, going rigid, tense, his ventilations sharp and shallow. Drift squeezed the panel, rubbing it roughly, grinning as Wing twitched and moaned softly over him. Yes. This was what he wanted—control and desire. And more than that—someone like Wing desiring and controlled.

"Drift," Wing began, gasping as Drift snapped open the hatch, his hand reaching for Wing's spike, squeezing it in his palm while his fingertips searched lower for the valve. "I…we…!"

Drift stroked the spike, letting his fingertips graze down over the valve's rim. "Do you want me to stop, Wing?" he purred, his voice like dark silk. "Do you?"

Wing hesitated, shivering over Drift. "I-?"

"Do you?" Drift repeated, twisting his hand as it slid up the spike. Wing's optics dimmed, his hips sliding into the gesture, unconsciously.

"No," Wing breathed.

Drift grinned. "What don't you want me to do?" he murmured, coaxingly. "Say it."

"Please," Wing said, gold optics ablaze with embarrassment. "Don't stop. I don't want you to stop." His optics shuttered, a vibration running the length of his frame, as though the admission wrung something from him, the pinions of his nacelles flaring. He was…exquisite to watch, and his tremulous desire was intoxicating to Drift.

And he wanted to throw Wing down on the berth, tear open his own panel, and plunge his spike into the eager valve, whose heat he could feel with every downstroke on the spike. But he restrained himself, measuring out his satisfaction, because even more than that he wanted this strange, new thing—Wing's exquisitely willing, visible desires, readable on every line and quiver of his face, every twitch of a wing. He pulled Wing's face down to his again, possessive and fierce, tasting the soft whimpering sounds as his hand continued to work along the length of the spike, twisting, teasing, leading it inexorably to climax, his whole frame feeling Wing's desire trembling and twitching against him.

Wing gave a cry, the sound rippling from his vocalizer, trapped by Drift's kiss, hands frantically seeking hold on Drift's armor as his frame jolted suddenly, the sharp crack of charge snapping over Drift's hand across the spike's nodes.

Wing curled down, awkwardly, after a moment, still trembling, his overload a crackling heat between them, his spilled transfluid silver and slick between their bodies. And Drift drank in this shyness, as hungrily as he had Wing's wanton desire, pulling his hand from between them to wrap it around Wing's hip, pressing them together, Wing's hypercharged spike between them, causing Wing to gasp in a last shock of spilled desire.

"I'm-I'm sorry," Wing began, his hands suddenly awkward on Drift's frame. "I…that…," his gold optics were importunate, and Drift found he liked this—Wing, finally ruffled, finally without that smooth gloss of courtesy and manners, finally, he felt, real. But still Wing—gentle and warm and open. And Drift heard an unfamiliar sound from his own vocalizer, a laugh, raw and awkward itself, unconfident, too new, but a laugh without bitterness, a sound of something like happiness as he pulled Wing's shoulders back down towards his, feeling Wing's helm nestle in against his as though it had belonged there all along, as though they fitted, something fierce and sweet and meant to be.


	5. Wingspan

NC-17  
IDW  
Drift/Wing  
sticky, minor bondage, possible consent issues if you're really, really sensitive, wing porn 

Drift had taken to toying with the silky black cord that Wing had used to bind him. He'd kept it in a storage compartment, taking it out at odd moments, to contemplate, to remember the moment, to occupy himself while Wing was doing something 'more important'. And sometimes he found himself thinking back not to his black cord, but Wing's red one, the way the white mech had writhed, twisted sensually, moaning, whimpering, optics dim. Turned inward, on that line between pain and rapture.

And Drift hadn't been allowed to touch.

The idea had grown from a denial—which Drift, traditionally, did not take well—to a borderline obsession, and Drift had found himself toying with his black rope with…a certain intent. And he found himself wondering, trying little tosses of the rope, loops to capture…perhaps…a black wrist.

He sat on the inside of the door to Wing's quarters, hearing approaching footsteps. Well, Drift? He felt a smile, lopsided, curve over his mouth, pressing his spaulders against the wall, a loose coil of rope in his right hand.

The door whooshed open.

"I am so sorry!" Wing said. "Normally, those meetings don't last anywhere nea-?" He caught himself, entirely unprepared—for once, Drift exulted—at the black loop that snapped around his wrist. The startled confusion on his face set Drift's systems racing, the grin anchoring itself in triumph across his mouth as he whipped around to snare the other wrist as well, sliding them tight, holding onto the long ends like a leash. "Drift?" Wing asked, pulling gently at his wrists.

"Wing?" Drift echoed, an unaccustomed lightness in his tone. He tugged on the rope, leading Wing farther into the room.

"This? I am…bound?" He was struggling with composure, unsure as to what his response should be, but when Drift jerked him closer, yanking on the rope, he could feel the aroused thrum of Wing's EM field against his own.

"You are," Drift said. And no more. He looked around for a place to anchor the rope. He wanted his hands free—and Wing's not. His optic caught one of the high brackets on the wall, a relic of some former use. That would do. He strode over, feeling a fierce joy at the awkward steps Wing had to take to keep from stumbling, his gait hampered by his immobilized hands.

"Am I being punished?" Wing, still trying to feel his way around this.

Drift tossed the rope over the bracket, catching the falling end, reeling Wing closer to the wall with it. Wing's arms were jerked over his head. The white jet struggled, pulling down on his arms. Drift snorted. Simple pulley mechanism—his force won. "Perhaps." He secured the rope in a knot.

"For what?" Wing peered at him from between his upraised arms, his shoulder nacelles tilting toward the ceiling.

Drift's optics glinted. "You'll tell me in the morning," he said, wryly. Echoing the words Wing had said to him before his vigil. He stepped back, letting Wing twist to follow his movements, stepping around Wing's body, his own gaze wandering up and down the exposed, vulnerable frame, that shivered in reaction to his words.

"Drift," Wing said, softly, pleadingly, his voice enflaming Drift.

Drift laughed, reaching in, slicking a hand over the exposed rib struts. Wing's protest died into a squeak. "Mine," Drift murmured, testing the word, the idea. Wing, tied, his.

Drift stepped around Wing, pinning the jet's hips against his, his hands wrapping around the narrow waist, riding up the chassis. The wings shivered against him, the Great Sword a cool solid mass between them. Drift's mouth found Wing's shoulder, nuzzling possessively into the white armor. Wing twisted, whimpering at Drift's roving touch.

Drift released his grip, reaching gently for the Great Sword's attachments. "You don't need this," he purred, feeling Wing's trembling resistance as he lifted the blade.

Drift ran one hand down the broad open channel in the white back. "Drift-!" Wing began, his ventilations ragged, shallow, as he twisted from side-to-side, shoulders rolling, nervous at the sudden emptiness, lack of weight between them. Drift grinned, ducking under the jet's upraised arm, planting a sudden, hard kiss on the parted lip plates.

"I'll take good care of it," he murmured, pulling away, letting his optics blaze over Wing's face, for a moment, drinking in Wing's breathless excitement, the tinge of something not quite like fear in his optics.

Drift carried the Sword to its bracket, letting Wing watch him place it carefully in its brackets, feeling the golden optics on him, tracing over his frame. He turned, quickly, catching Wing's gaze, and the mortified way Wing jerked his head aside, as though he hadn't been staring. Drift purred, folding his arms around Wing's body again, before letting his hands ride up the exposed rib struts, up the arms, fingertips teasing into the seams of the armor.

Wing made a soft noise in his throat, squirming against Drift's body, his wings shifting restlessly. Almost like a hint. Drift's hands came down, stroking the wings, tugging them open, exploring first with his hands and optics, then…after a moment's thought…with his mouth, blazing a hot trail with his glossa over an edge, nipping at a seam. Wing whimpered, writhing, his hands curling on each other far above his head. Drift turned his attention to the nacelles, gliding his fingertips over the manifolds, smirking as Wing's knees seemed to buckle, ex-venting in a rush.

"Want something?" he murmured, moving his mouth up a ridgespine of one nacelle.

"I'm fine," Wing said, quickly, before his vents hitched again.

"Wasn't what I asked, Wing," Drift chided, stepping around to the front. He tipped the chin up, gazes meeting. It changed something—everything and nothing—Wing immobilized like this. He pulled Wing roughly against him, mouth hard with desire against Wing's yielding lip-plates. His hands blazed down Wing's body, and Wing responded, squirming against him, thighs sliding around one of his legs, mouth chasing Drift's. When Drift pulled away, Wing's gaze was heavy-lidded with desire, spinal struts arching closer, mutely begging for contact.

Drift grinned, triumphantly, at Wing's wantonness. He moved to nip the underside of Wing's arm, chuckling into the thinner armor as Wing gasped, his entire body twitching, as if alive with raw current. He worked his way down the exposed side, his mouth blazing a trail of kisses and licks and nips. Wing twisted, quivering, gasping, at Drift's downward progress, Drift's hands and mouth exploring, learning the plates of Wing's armor, the shapes, the different textures. He pressed his face into Wing's white waist for a long moment, his hands riding over the pelvic armor, wrapping around Wing's hips, before each slid down the back of a thigh until the tips of his fingers flirted with the gaps in the backs of Wing's knees.

Wing squirmed, and Drift could feel the shudder of desire through the plates of Wing's belly, the pelvic armor bumping against his audio. Drift rested on one knee, tipping his head back, his gaze traveling up Wing's chassis, a long, slow tour of the changed contours, to Wing's face, open, desiring, lips parted, optics burning with longing. Drift nuzzled the pelvic span, optics locked with Wing's. The jet moaned, his entire body undulating into the touch.

This was, and he couldn't describe how or why, somehow more erotic than simply taking Wing. Drift's systems were ablaze, almost dizzied with input, as he found himself opening the hatch, pausing to lick along the hatch's interior metal, before turning his attention to Wing's equipment.

Wing's spike, silver, swirled and alien, jabbed the air, glossy with lubricant. Drift held Wing's gaze, dipping himself down to run his glossa in a long, slow line along the underside of the spike. He'd braced for..something unpleasant, but the lubricant tasted sweet and cool, and the spike's metal was smooth under his glossa. Wing had gone rigid, so tense he seemed to vibrate, pushing up onto his toe plates, arms stiff and forceful over his head. Drift growled and after another pause, took the spike's head into his mouth. Wing sucked in a hard in-vent.

It wasn't…bad. Possibly Wing's rigid immobility. Possibly the control he had—Wing tied, incapable of touching. He'd thought, he'd always seen, this as degrading, humiliating, what conquerors took from conquests, but here, this, seemed to have the power dynamic reversed, inverted, Wing the one trembling, quivering at the tiniest gesture, the smallest adjustment of Drift's mouth or glossa, Drift utterly, completely in control.

Of course, Drift had no technique, and nothing to guide him but Wing's whimpers and twitches and his own curiosity, letting his glossa probe at the spike's unusual construction, his mouthplates squeezing and releasing slowly, testing Wing's response. He skirted one hand between Wing's thighs, circling the rim of the valve. That…he was more familiar with, he thought, probing two fingers beyond the valve's rim, feeling the hard jolt through Wing's body, the shifting balance as Wing fought his bonds with some frantic force. Hot air from Wing's cooling system gusted over him as he got a rhythm, curling and uncurling his two fingers in a slow 'come here' gesture, dragging over the valve's anterior nodes, his glossa setting the same tempo, riding over the channels of the spike.

He glanced up, Wing seemingly in delirium, head rolling, optics wild and unfocussed, his entire concentration given over to Drift's control, his fingers, his mouth. Drift's own interface systems seemed distant, less vivid, less enthralling than Wing's open, vulnerable desire, his own attention keyed in to Wing's responses, projecting himself onto, into Wing's body.

Wing's whimpering gave way to panting, his body twisting, alternating from sagging against the binding and rigid tension held in place both times by Drift's other, inexorable hand.

"Drift!" Wing cried out, halfway between a summoning and a warning, an instant before his valve shuddered, squeezing against the intruding fingers, fluid gushing hot as embarrassment over Drift's hand. A half-klik later, the spike seemed to jolt in Drift's mouth, filling it with a silver sweet rush of transfluid.

Wing panted above him as Drift swallowed, a bit clumsily, licking his way down to release the spike first. Hot fluid dripped off his wrist from Wing's valve as he eased his hand away, pushing from his knee to stand. Wing's post-coital languor was…beautiful, the shivering limbs, the optics heavy-lidded and pleading, his EM an electric fuzz that flared against Drift. "Well," Drift said, voice husky from his own lust, thick with the taste of Wing's overload, "shall I untie you?" He reached a hand up one of Wing's arms, fingertips toying with the black knot.

Wing's fingers caught Drift's hand, clutching, desperate, his mouth finding Drift's, parting Drift's mouthplates with his own, tasting himself on Drift's glossa. Drift pulled away, teasing. Wing's systems whined against him. "I want to touch you," Wing breathed, optics dim, as though this admission were somehow shocking, wrong, admitting to weakness. "Please."

Drift laughed at the appended 'please', somewhere between begging and courtesy. His free hand pulled Wing's body against his, catching Wing's spike between their frames. The jet groaned, hips pushing almost involuntarily into the pressure, already aroused, already wanting more. "You are touching me," Drift goaded.

Wing writhed his body against Drift's, wings flaring for balance, rocking his spike between them. "Please. More? I want to touch you." His strong, swordsman's hands kneaded at Drift's.

Drift stepped back, out of Wing's reach, only his hand still trapped by Wing, nimbly evading the ankle that tried to hook his own, drag him closer. Wing whined with want. "So," Drift said, "Are you being punished?"

Wing hesitated, face cycling through a host of emotions, responses. The ventilations eased slightly, from desperate pants to slow, even vents. "You'll have to try harder than this," he said, voice husky and dark, optics flaring with a defiant desire, "Decepticon."

[***]

Drift licked his way up Wing's thigh, tracing a line of energon, sweet and effervescent on his glossa. Wing shivered, rocking helplessly into the sensation—Drift's mouth, hot and wanting, against his armor. "Trying hard enough?" Drift asked, voice gruff, raw with energon and a certain darkness. He held one of Wings many, many blades in one hand—a small dagger, barely larger than his palm, but wickedly sharp, capable of slicing quick nicks through an energon line almost painlessly.

"Please," Wing murmured, head bowed between his bound arms. "I want to touch you." He'd been saying this for the last hour, pleading, begging, nearly sobbing in desperation, one wish, one want. "Why won't you let me touch you?"

You do. You do, Drift thought. In every way that matters, in ways I never thought possible. This is the only control I have. The only limit I can find. He nuzzled into the hip joint, glossa probing for the line he'd nicked, for the source. Wing gave a whimpering growl, writhing against him.

Drift surged to his feet, pulling the jet's frame against his, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, mouth meeting mouth. Wing's mouth was cool at first, vented from the air he had been panting, but warmed swiftly, mobile, soft against Drift's, eager, seeking through Drift's mouth for the taste of his own energon.

Drift pulled back, his hands cupping Wing's face, the lidded golden optics, the full mouth, the high, arched cheekstruts. Beautiful in ways Drift couldn't describe: not just the lines, the design, but the source that animated them. And…his. At least right now, bound, helpless, begging to touch him. Begging not to be cut down, not to have his pain end, but to be able to lay his hands—wanting, craving—on Drift. Being wanted, desired, was new to him. Drift was used to being ignored, or hated, used to cold, almost anonymous interfacing, barely touching, barely looking.

His gaze fed upon Wing. And he knew he'd never be like Wing, always too selfish, always wanting to be looked at, wanting to be touched, and wanted and desired.

"Your wings," he whispered. "I want to see them."

Wing turned his head, brushing his cheek against one of Drift's hands. Drift let his thumb slide over the smooth metal, tracing the join of the helm, as Wing obediently flared his wings behind him, locking them out.

Drift had the usual grounder's strange fascination with wings, the sleek planes that allowed a mech—a creature of metal and cables and wires—to slice the air, defiant of gravity. Wing's were sleek and compact, like him, the plates sliding together behind his shoulders. So unlike the wings of flyers Drift remembered—solid panels, massy and wide. Wing's were small, compact, an intricate profile in the air. Drift's optics traveled over them, hungry, wanting, his ventilation hushed in something like reverence, while before him, Wing's head was low, obedient.

Drift's hands moved, almost of their own accord, without will, the dagger still tucked against his wrist, under Wing's upraised arms to stroke the spread panels, fingers riding along the grooves between the plates, palms cupping over the white metal. Wing fell against him, limp, shivering. "Sensitive," Drift observed.

"They have to be," Wing whispered. "Air currents, temperature, shear, everything that affects flight performance."

Drift grunted, his mind spinning at the thought of such sensitivity—exquisite but also dangerous. Fragile. And for some reason, even though Deadlock's cortex rebelled, all the more beautiful for their sensitivity.

Drift crossed around behind Wing, letting one hand trail over the red and white chassis, his other groping boldly over a wing, until he stood behind Wing, between the spread panels.

He slapped the dagger against his thigh, letting its magnet adhere it to his dark metal, before letting his hands travel in tandem over the wings, broad sweeps of each panel, finger-tip traces along the scalloped edge. Wing shivered, shuddered, panted against him.

"I wonder," Drift said, idly, sweeping his hands under the wings, chuckling at Wing's whine, the shoulder nacelles flaring in frustration. "I wonder if it's possible to get you off this way."

"Drift," Wing whimpered. The wings vibrated.

Drift jerked Wing back, the length of the bonds lifting Wing onto an unstable balance on his toe plates. Drift's engines revved against the backspan. "Don't tell me," he murmured. He ran his hands over the wings again, gently, the lightest touch he could manage, and then harder, pushing his palms into the metal, feeling the wings give and resist. Wing, trembling with desire, hooked his ankles around Drift's, pushing his weight into Drift, using the leverage to squirm his hips against Drift.

Drift growled, biting the top edge of one wing, hands gripping around Wing's chassis, taking more of his weight. "Want me?" he growled.

"Yes!" Wing's head whipped from side to side, audio fins slicked flat against his head, glints of gold from his optics earnest over his shoulders. "Please."

Drift slid one hand down between Wing's parted thighs. Wing squirmed, trying to ease his spike out of Drift's hand.

"No, please," Wing's voice was meek, pleading. "Take me. I want to feel you-," he cut himself off, twisting his bound wrists futilely.

"Feel me," Drift prompted. He'd learned there were edges Wing wanted to be pushed over. Not shame, not embarrassment, but a thrill of transgressing someone else's boundaries.

"Feel you take me." Wing shivered. "Overload in me. Please."

Drift snorted. Wing was asking—begging—to be used, taken, in a way that would have gotten him…destroyed in the Decepticons. But somehow this wasn't weakness, but had a kind of sacred weight to it, offering himself, the strange strength of placing someone else's pleasure as your desire, offering what normally had to be taken.

Drift rocked his pelvic frame back, snaking one hand between them to release his spike, pushing into the valve. Wing cried out, his shoulder actuators firing, twisting in his bonds. His wings riffled. Drift stopped. "Keep them out, Wing."

"I—?"

"The wings. Keep them open." The wings straightened, tremulously. Drift rewarded Wing by a slow, dragging thrust. Drift heaved up Wing's legs, locking the thighs around his hips, before moving his hands to grip over the wings again, sinking his dentae into the wing's leading edge. Wing moaned, head lolling, as Drift ran his hands possessively over the wings, thrusting his spike into the valve. He was readier than he wanted to admit, the spectacle of Wing's submission, the wings spread obediently, the valve slick and yielding against his spike, the soft whimpers, and the aftertaste of Wing's energon assailed his senses across his input span.

Wing cried out, his valve clenching against Drift, his thighs gripping over Drift's dark hips, hands twisting in their bonds. His wings shocked against Drift, the charge of the overload shimmering over the curved spans, a velvety flare against Drift's chassis, his glossa. Drift continued, driven by lust, maddened by Wing's response, one hand on the wings, the other gripping over a thigh.

Drift snarled, sinking his dentae into the wing, biting hard enough to dent the metal, Wing gasping, his valve rippling against Drift as he thrust in once, twice, hard and deep, releasing all of his pent-up desire in an overload that blanked his systems, charge battering against the sensitive wingspan.

Wing's vents heaved, his entire body shaking, wings rigid, as Drift relaxed against him, the hard grip on his wing and thigh softening. Drift allowed himself, now, Wing wrung out with lust, turned away, bound, quivering, to have a moment of weakness, to nuzzle against the neck, pressing the bare channel of the Great Sword's sheath against his chassis, feeling the hard throb of his spark through the barriers and baffles of metal. For a long moment he held Wing, Wing lay carefully still, sinking into the embrace, not calling attention to what it was, to the vulnerability of Drift's mute admission.

Drift growled at himself, pushing back, pulling his spike out of Wing's valve, feeling the trickle of friction-heated fluid down the metal. Wing responded, unhooking his ankles from behind Drift's hips, easing himself to the ground.

Drift pulled the blade off his leg, reaching up to cut the cord that bound Wing's wrists. Wing tore his arms apart, still quivering, letting his weight sink back into his legs, his feet, unsteady. "May I retract them now?" he asked, half-turned, fingers plucking black cord from his wrists.

"Yeah," Drift croaked, suddenly embarrassed, as Wing turned, thighs smeared with transfluid and energon from the nick he'd cut, wings trembling as they folded themselves back against Wing's spine.

"I," Wing said, his voice like dark velvet, "do not think you are punishing me."


	6. Deserts

PG  
IDW  
Wing/Drift  
no warnings  
for **tformers100** table talent prompt disappear

Drift snarled, hands clutching the balcony railing as though trying to throttle it. He hated this place, its perfection too grating, the peaceful hum too steady and lulling. A mech could get weak here, lose his edge, blunted against the kindness and happiness of this place. A happiness, he thought, with a sharp snort, that could only exist bubbled up safely underground. As if even they realized it was too fragile to stand reality. A grand friable delusion, like a city made of glass.

"Drift," Wing's voice, from the interior. A question, a careful one, as though he could sense Drift's mood. Drift didn't answer. He heard footsteps behind him and he could just picture it: the white jet pausing in the doorway, gold optics alight with concern. As though he didn't know what was bothering Drift.

He saw a red flash—the blade of Wing's forearm, as the jet rested a hand next to Drift's on the balcony. Drift resented, perversely, Wing not touching him, though he knew he would have snapped and thrown off any touch. Stupid, he thought. Sign of how this place is messing with you.

"I'm guessing," Wing said, quietly, "you're not admiring the city."

Drift felt his mouth twist. What was to admire? "Why admire a prison."

"Drift," Wing began, "It's not a-," he cut himself off. "I suppose it must seem that way to you."

"Seem that way?" He turned his head. "It is."

"You're angry."

Drift's optics flashed. "You wouldn't be?" His hands tightened on the railing, knuckle servos whining.

"That's not the point."

"Then why ask?"

"I want to help, Drift." Wing risked a touch, his smallest finger hooking over Drift's. A minute connection.

"Let me go," Drift snapped. The old argument, again. It was like ramming his face into a steel wall. It never went anywhere. But sometimes he just wanted to make Wing say the words, realize the hypocrisy, that not everyone wanted to be part of his perfect little city. Not when there was a war to win.

"And if I did?" Wing said. "You would still take this anger with you, Drift."

"So?" A challenge. What did it matter to Wing, anyway?

"Holding onto anger means you're stifling happiness."

"Happiness." Drift scoffed. "There's a fraggin' war on, Wing. You can hide, here in the dirt, and pretend it's not, but I can't." Because that's what this place was: running, hiding away from reality. Happiness. The idea was almost…blasphemy.

"You'll destroy yourself, taking your rage back to your war," Wing said, his voice losing some of the gentleness, becoming the challenging tone he used when they sparred.

"Who cares? Better to die for something." His anger gave him strength. It blocked out, scorched, weakness.

Wing's face shifted through some unreadable emotions. "I care, Drift."

"Which you show by keeping me prisoner here." Bringing it right back around, Drift thought, to the main point: Let me go.

A long, frustrated sigh. "Drift," he said, changing tactic, stroking the hand gently down the back of Drift's. "Why are you angry?"

"I just told you!" He snatched his hand away. Wing wasn't even paying attention. How could he not know?

"I mean, what's under that. You're angry because you can't fight. Why?"

"Because they need me." A brief flash of memory: Turmoil leaning over him, sneering his own retort to Deadlock's claim.

Wing turned to face him. "They need one more mech with a gun. You'll tip the balance single-handedly."

"Mocking me, Wing?" His mouth pressed together in a thin line, stung.

"No. Just…trying to understand."

"You can't." His optics flashed, hot and hostile.

"Help me understand, then, Drift?" The voice, softening again. The hand, still lifted from when Drift had torn his away, lowered slowly back to the railing.

"You can't understand," Drift muttered, some of the heat leaving his voice. "Who I am, where I've come from." He didn't want Wing to understand, to see that ugliness. No matter how much he wanted to hurt the jet sometimes…not that. It would be a wound that gashed them both.

Wing dipped his head, not arguing. For once. Drift had half expected some plea, some reiteration, some push for disclosure. As if what Drift needed was to lay himself open even more before the jet. "What's under that, Drift?"

"What?"

"You want to get back to the war. To win it. Why? For yourself?"

"Why?" Blank. He wasn't sure what answer Wing wanted—wasn't even sure Wing knew.

"I mean…fame, glory? Why? What do you want?" He shook his head, the glittering light sparkling off his helm. "No. Not glory. Not you."

Drift's brow creased. "Not fame. Just…make things better."

Wing tapped his chassis. "I mean, in here. Not," another tap, gently, on his rank crest, "here."

Drift frowned.

"What do you feel, Drift? Right now?"

"You know this."

"Say it anyway." The gold optics tilted, with curiosity. Not like when they sparred, when Wing was hard and pushing against him, knowing everything, always one step ahead.

Drift gave an impatient sigh. "Anger. Fraggin' captive here. Stuck."

"Stop rationalizing. Don't give me reasons. Just…what you're feeling."

"Fine. Anger." His optics slid off to the city. "Hatred."

"You're pushing something away, Drift. What?"

"Not pushing anything away." He snapped his gaze back to Wing, defiant.

"You are. Look." Wing turned his head. "You see only bad things here. As if the only thing that matters is the shadows. Can you even imagine what we see?"

"Delusion. Brittle fantasy."

Wing sighed. "All right. Why? Why would we do that?"

"Easier. Lie here in your pretty lives, everything clean, everyone smiling at each other. But it's fake, if you have to hide, if you," he jerked his chin at Wing, "have to keep me away from others, keep me from contaminating this place." Oh he'd heard Dai Atlas: the large mech's voice resonated down the hallway.

Wing moved, the hand brushing Drift's wrist. "You sound jealous, Drift," he suggested, softly.

The hot retort died in Drift's vocalizer. "Tell me it's not true. Tell me this place isn't so fragile."

"I can't. It is." Wing shrugged. "But this is about you. Can you even see the…temptation? A hint of what others might see?"

Drift hissed, his optics raking over the city, imagining it burning, all the hypocrisy and lies that must exist under this pretty, glittering façade exposed at last.

No. Because it can't be real." His voice didn't hold the fire he thought it would.

"It is real, or as real as we can make it, Drift." The hand moved, gently, on his arm. Drift didn't move, but he didn't shake the touch off, either. "And it's yours, if you want it."

"Not mine. Didn't earn it." He felt his mouth curl into a sneer, looking down from Wing's balcony to the city stretched before them. Their city. Their brittle little fantasy. His would be stronger. Better. …somehow.

"Ah." The optic shutters flared, mouth flickering into a small smile. "That's it, isn't it."

"That's what?" He looked up, sharply.

"That's what's under your anger. You don't feel you deserve anything good."

"What? Ridiculous." The lights seemed…too dazzling somehow, shifting and twisting in the very edges of vertigo.

"Is it? Then say it, Drift. Tell me you deserve this city. Tell me you deserve anything."

"I-," his mouth shut. He…couldn't. His mouth tasted like ash even trying to force the words. He didn't deserve any of it. Not the city's vision—real or not. Not the repairs. Not…. Not Wing.

He tore his arm out from under Wing's, turning to the dark arch that led inside, hoping to hide his face, the roiling emotion, in its darkness.

"Drift."

He stopped, not turning around, not trusting himself. "What?" Haven't you done enough, said enough, he thought, wildly, desperately.

"What can I do to convince you otherwise?" Wing's voice was soft, no longer challenging, teasing, but gentle, importuning.

"Nothing," he said, nearly choking on the word. His hands balled and opened, impotent.

Arms folded around him, from the back, and he felt the familiar hum of Wing's systems against him, the slide of one of the knee stabilizers against his thigh.

"Anger's all I have," Drift said, the sentence brittle, breaking under the pressure of being spoken. All I deserve.

"No," Wing said. The arms tightened around him. "You have—you are—so much more than you let yourself be."

Drift felt a sneer flame across his face. "Wish I could believe you." He aimed for sarcasm, but the edge drained from his voice, leaving it raw, an honest, earnest wish. His hand came to the arms wrapping around his torso.

"I'll believe for both of us." The words were barely a whisper, seeming traveling through the contact of their bodies. Drift's hand folded over the hand on his chassis, tipping his head back, as though he could drink in Wing's confidence and faith. And the glittering night seemed to offer itself for him, the cool air sucking the heat from the last of his anger, replacing it with some gentle, shimmering hope.


	7. Weakness in Strength

PG  
IDW  
Drift, Wing  
no warnings  
for **tformers100** table war prompt victory 

Drift snarled in frustration as he slammed into the ground. He had to win. He had to get out of here. The war needed him, even if Turmoil didn't. Turmoil was too cautious, too careful.

Two things no one had ever said about Deadlock.

He rolled to a crouch, optics blazing at Wing, who stood, calm, relaxed, serene. Not even in a combat stance. Just…standing, patiently. Like an insult. Like Drift wasn't even a threat. He roared, launching himself at Wing, bull-headed toward the chassis. A wild, reckless attack, but nothing else had worked.

His shoulder connected—briefly—before Wing dropped his weight, scooping under Drift's mass, coming up with one of the blades of his knee stabilizers into Drift's midsection, in a small gap between the New Crystal City repairs and the frame they'd been able to salvage.

Drift gave a choked cry, falling off to the side, barely catching himself on one elbow. The other hand clutched at his abdominal plating, feeling the new gouge, feeling the deeper pain inside his chassis, as though his spark chamber had been struck. The room seemed to lurch around him, his stabilizing gyros spinning wildly, arm shaking to support him.

"Drift?" Wing's voice, the hard tone he normally used in these sessions evaporating.

Drift growled, determined to rise. He pushed one hand into the floor, sweeping one foot forward, trying to lean his weight into it. He wobbled, head turning to spot Wing, expecting a face full of mockery or condescension, before he fell over, clattering to the ground, his vid feed dissolving in smears of color.

"Drift!" The word seemed chopped into micro-kliks of sound. Drift felt weight on top of him, the solid pressure of a hand. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Drift muttered, swatting at the hands on his chassis. Wing pinned one hand down, almost thoughtlessly, bowing over Drift's torso, peering at the damage. He wiggled something. Drift gasped, his tanks churning, a sudden lance of vertigo spiking across his visual feed.

"Almost got it," Wing said. "Sorry, hit a weak spot in your armor."

Drift tried to growl. Weak. He was not weak. But he was unable to shift his hand from under Wing's, unable to do anything but lie there, gasping for stability. Wing paused, leaned over, dropping a quick, soft kiss on Drift's mouth. "You're not weak. Faulty repairs." He smiled, optics lighting warm and gold over Drift's cheeks. "And a bit of bad luck."

"Don't believe in luck." Drift turned his head. Wing's hand pressed his against his chassis.

"You should," Wing murmured. "Luck decides when skill is equally matched." He tilted his head. "Surely you had some luck in your escape?"

"No. I knew what I was doing." Sort of. It had been the usual blinding straightforward rush that combat was for him, paths just opening up in front of him, discovering what to do, step by step. That wasn't luck. That was survival, instincts honed by the very fight to exist.

Wing nodded, indulgently. "Then, me?"

"Not luck. Weakness." He frowned. The room seemed to be moving around him, pulsing in and out.

"Oh, Drift," Wing murmured, almost sadly. He bent back to the task, using both hands this time to pry up a dented plate. "You are not weak. You've never been weak."

Drift groaned, feeling the metal give under Wing's hands, popping out, releasing the pressure on the core powerline. The vertigo faded, his gyroscopic stabilizers returning to a calmer whirl. Never been weak. Right. Shivering in the gutters, helpless to even find a meal. Not weak at all. "Can't defeat you."

"That's not a matter of strength or weakness, Drift," Wing said. He settled down on the floor next to Drift, reaching to help him sit up.

Drift swatted the hands away, pushing up to sit, rubbing at the damage on his chassis. "Really."

Wing smiled. "Really."

"What else is there?" He craned his head, trying to see the damage.

"It's a matter of skill—which you're learning—and luck. Which you don't believe in." The smile softened. "You see? Not everything is sheer, brute force and aggression." Wing leaned forward, running an almost playful finger down Drift's arm, tapping one of his worn, battered knuckles. "Otherwise you'd have won by now."

Drift's gaze followed the hand, then looked up, studying Wing's face for a sign of mockery, insult.

Wing laughed, his optics lighting with a teasing affection. "If it were will and force, you'd have won the war singlehandedly."

"Beat you eventually," Drift muttered, but the hostility was blunted. Force had gotten him nowhere. And will, determination? It had pulled him from the gutters, and somehow, Wing seeing that, Wing recognizing that, mattered.

"You will," Wing nodded, confidently.

"Seem awfully happy about the idea of losing."

"Sometimes one wins by losing," Wing said, his smile turning warm, enigmatic.

"Cheap platitudes." Drift grunted, rolling, gingerly, to get his feet underneath him to rise. "Next you'll tell me I can lose by winning. Sleep while being awake. Starve by eating. Speak by making no sound." He shook his head. "Weakness through strength."

"Strength can be weakness," Wing said, "If it's all you ever rely on." He rose, taking Drift's shoulder, helping him stand. Drift wobbled against him, wishing he could jerk himself away.

"Ridiculous."

Wing bent in, planting another gentle kiss on Drift's frowning mouth. "You'll see, one day." The gold optics shone like the sun far above them. "And then you'll understand."

"Not likely." Drift, nonetheless, allowed the kiss, letting one hand curl around the jet's torso.

"You'd be surprised," Wing replied, flaring his wings out for Drift's touch. "And oh, won't you be magnificent." He gave a happy chirr.

Probably not, Drift thought, but his mind was filled with other thoughts, other sensations: Wing's body, full of force and skill...and luck...yielding against him. He couldn't defeat Wing in combat, but in this, Wing simply surrendered. Strength in weakness, probably, Drift thought, with a wry snort, giving himself in to the embrace.


	8. Potentia

PG  
IDW  
Drift/Wing  
for **tformers100** table weather prompt sun little vignette

** What is right is never easy.  
**

Drift settled on the night-cool sand, next to Wing. The open air seemed to beckon him, the pre-dawn darkness stretch around him, erasing the distance between himself and the stars.

Stars. Where he needed to be. This was a false peace, a respite he hadn't earned. But Wing was becoming more than a temptation to him, more than an obstacle. He was beginning to want the jet, not just for the sleek body, but for things like this: these quiet moments, somehow redolent with mystery. He had no idea what Wing wanted from him, bringing him out here, out of the City. Was it to taunt him with freedom he couldn't exploit? Was it a test? A test of what?

Wing shifted his feet, toe plates pushing up mounds of the soft, powdery sand, white limbs almost luminous in the darkness. His engine pinged in the cool air, and the City's gateway lay some distance behind them, like a past they were both wanting—at least for the moment—to forget. "Comfortable?"

Drift shrugged, his spaulder grating on the sandstone behind him. "Fine." Compared to the gutters, anything was luxury. And luxury softened. So he found himself almost welcoming the roughness of the stone behind him. "Why are we here?"

A chuckle. "Philosophy, Drift?"

Drift bridled. No. And he didn't know if Wing meant it to sting as much as it did. "Don't do philosophy." The thought crossed his cortex again: to attack Wing, take him down, make his escape. One mech, standing between himself and freedom. How Turmoil would mock him.

He felt his mouth shrivel and harden at the thought of Turmoil. He had been so clear of purpose there, in that ship: escape, fight the war, but on his terms. His terms and no one else's. It had burned hot against his chassis, this need to do, to move.

And yet here he was, quiet, almost obedient, sitting on cool, wind-smoothed sand, next to one captor.

A hand brushed against his, sending sand skimming over the backplate. "I know." As if he knew Drift's thoughts, all of them, as though Drift were made of crystal, easily read. One finger slipped between his two farther fingers. "I like this time the best," Wing said, his voice soothing in the dimness, and Drift was glad that his face couldn't be seen, the hard set of his mouth was shrouded in indigo. "It's not day. It's not night. It's this…liminal place and time where anything could happen."

"Danger." Drift remembered this darkness, this unknown span of time. Stand-to in the Decepticons, where the chances for assault spiked, and before that, in the gutters, it was always this impenetrable formless darkness, this potential that never promised anything good.

"Or," Wing said, "Something else. Something good. Potential is neutral."

"Nothing's ever neutral," Drift muttered, but he didn't move his hand away. He wondered again why Wing brought him here. To see? To understand? No, he realized, to feel; he was brought here because Wing wanted him to feel. He rebelled against it for a klik, clutching at resistance with rote-calloused fingers.

"The universe," Wing said, and Drift could tell by the sound Wing had tilted his head up, taking in the canopy of stars. "The universe is neutral."

"And you," Drift retorted. "You're neutral."

A tilt of the golden line of optics glowing in the darkness, gilding a curve of a cheekplate. "There's a difference between refusing to take sides among two equal wrongs and being 'neutral'."

Drift half-understood, realizing that this was something he couldn't understand all at once, couldn't take in as easily as fact. Wing operated under some strange non-factual logic that, like some different grade of energon, required time to break down.

"What do you do, then?" Arguing for the sake of throwing resistance, a habit he couldn't break. And one that Wing indulged.

"I do what's right, Drift."

"Right." Scoffing sarcasm in his voice. "If it were that fraggin' easy…."

"Yes." A sound of shifting metal beside him. "There would be no war." A pause, and the voice seemed sadder, as if somehow the lack of vision made Drift's hearing more acute, more sensitized. "But 'right' is almost never 'easy'."

Drift subsided into silence, unable to counter that. Nothing was ever easy. He sagged back against the stone, watching as the sky before them lightened, almost imperceptibly, things becoming visible in grayscale—the contours of stones, the undulating waves of sand, shadowless and blur-edged, the darkness lifting from indigo into an ashen black. And the world seemed to resolve itself around them from the formlessness: sky, ground, horizon, the tissue of clouds, the rounded texture of sand, the hard clean edges of Wing's legs.

Light seemed to fill the silence between them, slowly licking color back into Wing's frame, even as it dimmed the gold glow of his optics. And Drift caught himself looking, not at the sky, streaked coral and purple, or the ground, sprouting shadows, but at Wing, who seemed the only solid thing in this world, the only presence truly at peace.

Wing's head tilted, a minute movement, the gold optics finding Drift's blue like the sun finding its place in the sky. "And you," he said, moving his hand, finally, to curl over Drift's, "are also potential, on the cusp of becoming."

The sun seemed to halo around Wing, like an immanence of truth, the optics kindling with trust and hope and faith, and Drift felt the light a thin shell on his armor, yes, but igniting a greater light, a greater heat, within.


	9. Moontide

NC-17  
IDW  
Wing/Drift  
sticky, pwp  
for tformers100 Table Weather Prompt Tide 

Wing sighed, vents stirring the air along Drift's thighs as he stood on the rocky promontory. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Drift shrugged. "I guess."

Wing turned, his gold optics glowing in the darkness. "What do you see, Drift? When you look at this, what do you think? Feel?"

Drift snorted, but dutifully enough stepped closer to the edge. The planet's two moons hung like coins, round and full, over the glimmering water below. Waves crashed against the shore below, foam and white against the black strand.

"Amphibious assault," he muttered. He pointed to two spots where the serpentine surface of the ocean seemed stirred. "Shallows there, and there." He made a grunt. "Best time to assault the shore in…three cycles. When the moons are lower, the shadows will be confusing."

Wing stepped closer, one hand brushing Drift's thigh. "Not everything is a battle, Drift," he murmured.

Drift shrugged. "Look there: water on shore. Tell me that's not a fight. Tell me the ocean doesn't want to win."

"It doesn't," Wing said. "They have been doing this for millennia, Drift."

"The war's been going on for longer." No need to specify what war.

"But there is no rage, here," Wing said. "Think of it as a dance." He pointed to the moons. "They provide the music, the slow tempo of water and ground."

"Dance." A snort. "You think fighting's a dance, too."

"It's a better metaphor than war," Wing said. He leaned closer, mouthplates brushing Drift's cheek. Drift turned his head, his mouth seeking the kiss, wanting. It was reflex, desire. He told himself that he should take it because it was his to take, because the sweetness of Wing's kisses made up for—in part—the unrelenting hardness of his methods.

Wing gave a soft, throaty moan against him, arms wrapping around Drift's frame. The ground seemed to lurch under Drift, as Wing threw his weight sideways, plummeting them toward the ground. Drift clutched at Wing's body, mouth fierce and hot on Wing's, thrown headlong into trust, knowing Wing would not let them fall.

At the last instant, the nacelles burned blue hot, twin moons of their own against the silk-sheened darkness. And gravity lurched under him, Wing carrying him just over the waves, so the salty cold froth sprayed over them both.

Wing landed in the shallows, the two of them tumbling to the stony shore, the water cold and bracing over their lust-heated frames. The waves crashed over them, water and foam, hissing through their bodies. Wing writhed over Drift, one hand skillful, even in the crashing waves, opening their hatches, and Drift gasped at the cold rush of water over his interface equipment.

/This is a battle/ Wing murmured, voice a thrilling vibration over Drift's comm, as he sank his spike into Drift's valve, /This is a dance./

Drift arched up into it, all of it: the water fizzing through him, the delicate lick of the ebbing tide, the sideways slip of fine grit over his armor, and Wing's mouth, warm and pliant, on his, Wing's spike pulsing and hard within him. /Yes,/ he murmured, hands clinging to the jet's body, legs twining around Wing's thighs.

/What you see is what you are,/ Wing said, his body arching against Drift's, spike surging into the other's body, like the tide made incarnate. And Drift, looking up, could see only the two gold orbs of Wing's optics, moons of light, shining down on him.


End file.
